From Game Addiction to Game Culture: The Panorama of Chinese Video Game Research

This chapter traces the historical development of Chinese video game studies from the 1980s to mid-2010s. From 1982 to 1994, Chinese society tended to regard video games as meaningless and an evil force. From 1995 to 2003, Chinese scholars viewed video games as a form of art, and made concerted efforts to overcome public prejudices against games. Beginning in 2004, Chinese academic talk about video games turned to the medium’s connections with movies, media studies, and cultural industries, sparking academic monographs such as Interactive Media: Studying Multiple Interactivity and Narrative Patterns of Digital Games (Zhejiang University Press, 2012), Online Games: Carnival and Bewitchment (Soochow University Press, 2012), and Ludology: A Semi-Narratological Study (Sichuan University Press, 2014). The chapter concludes with a look at the opportunities and challenges for future game studies in China.